Dragon Age conquers Canadian Videogame Awards
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
BioWare RPG named best 2009 game developed in Great White North; Assassin's Creed II wins four categories, including best console game.
While Dragon Age: Origins received a wealth of year-end award nominations, BioWare's latest walked away from the awards season with little in the way of high-profile hardware aside from the Interactive Achievement Award for role-playing or massively multiplayer game of the year. However, the Edmonton-based developer did add a couple of honors to the trophy case last night, as its critically acclaimed PC, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 game took home Game of the Year and Best Writing honors at the inaugural Canadian Videogame Awards in Vancouver.
Produced by The Digital Media and Wireless Association of British Columbia, the CVAs were established to honor the finest Canadian-made games that went gold in 2009. Only full games were considered eligible, with expansions, upgrades, and mission packs explicitly ruled disallowed.
Other Game of the Year contenders included Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War II (Vancouver-based Relic Entertainment), FIFA 10 (EA Canada), Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes (Toronto's Capybara Games), and Assassin's Creed II (Ubisoft Montreal). While the Ubisoft action adventure missed out on the biggest prize of the night, it won more categories than any other game, with awards for Best Console Game, Best Game Design, Best Visual Arts, and Best Technology. (Assassin's Creed II actually shared the Best Technology award with Prototype, from Vancouver-based Radical Entertainment.)
Capybara also won multiple awards, with its regurgitation-centric puzzler Critter Crunch leading the Best Downloadable Game category, and the Game of the Year nominee Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes for the DS named Best Handheld Game.
For more on the awards, check out the official CVA Web site.
By
Brendan Sinclair, Senior Editor
Brendan Sinclair has been a games journalist since 1999. His tastes are eclectic, though he has a definite affinity for games with arcade roots. He's Canadian, but has also been at home in Atlanta, Austin, Chicago, and San Francisco.
48 comments
Dragon Age, awesome game. Playing it again right now as a matter of fact. Let's hope for a sequel!! Like Baldur's Gate 1 which became 2. Dragon Age 2, bigger.. meaner .. !
Bioware is the best. But Gamespot should ask Radical Entertainment why they abandoned Prototype - they still haven't programmed any patches yet.
@Leinhartx i agree with you completely. We should appreciate what we have cause were fortunate to live in 2 great countries. but we should all remember, we may live in different countries but we have the same love for games.
Personally Ubisoft's Uplay is pretty dumb, thats off topic though. Not to mention you hafe to log onto there servers to play the game which was a bad move. Sorry but I had to post my opinion on them they just pissed me off with that considering I wanted to play Settlers 7 and Assasins Creed but cant considering I live on a Navy vessel with no IP.
*sigh* why is it whenever something like this comes up Canadians and Americans start fighting over how great the piece of land they sit their butts on is? Stupid things like this really get to me. It was LUCK you were born where you are. It doesn't make you a better person or a worse one. Just another way to keep our two great nations bickering over stupid stuff. That said, Dragon age was awesome and my personal game of the year (I'm American btw)
Good DAO was one of the best RPGs i have ever played... Oh and what's up with only giving awards to the Canadian games..? Scared of competition or something :o..?
Ofcourse Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed won. They're the only reasonable games coming out of that country. Silly Canadians.
A Canadian video game awards event that only gives awards to games made in Canada? WTF is this. Why's it matter where a game is made? They should have named it Canadian National Insecurity Awards. If we had the same thing, but an American version, everyone would call us bigots and elitists.
Great, now they can finally publish a 'game of the year edition' of this game, containing all DLC - I've been holding out on buying the game for such an event...
It's nice to see that my top two favourite games (Assasin's Creed 2, Dragon Age Origins) did so well. But then again I was kind of expecting it :). Yay us!
Did not know FIFA 10, DOW 2 and Assassin's Creed 2 were Canadian made games. Good job my fellow Canadians on creating some great games.
Games and music is my thing I do on my spare time and I am happy that my "home" shares the same interest as me! If you love the music I do, I will find you and give you a hug (no homo someday! (Check out Cancer Bats, Dead and Divine, Protest the Hero) Now if there is a way to wipe Nickleback from existence without anyone noticing....
Good to see Canadian video games are stepping out to be recognized in for being Canadian
@thorughfire Funny...you must not know much about world history to say something ignorant like that.
thorughfire ignorant morons like you make other americans look bad. Im sure they don't appreciate it.
I'm British, but Canada is great to, i want to visit it sometime, looks like a brilliant country.
@thorughfire NO, Canada is a great country, stop kissing American ass. Anyway good for Dragon Age + BioWare and i guess Canada as well.
@ thorughfire, uhh actually we don't need protection because we don't attack other countries to be living in fear unlike our southern neighbor.
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Dragon Age: Origins
- Publisher(s): Electronic Arts
- Developer(s): BioWare
- Genre: Role-Playing
- Release:
- ESRB: M
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